Survivor of Nanking gets libel damages

A woman who survived the Nanking Massacre and won a landmark defamation lawsuit in Japanese courts earlier this year has been paid compensation of more than 4.55 million yen (HK$355,000).

Xia Shuqin, 80, told Xinhua that her lawyers in Japan had received the libel damages for the lawsuit against a Japanese writer and his publishing house that have accused her in print of bearing false witness.

Mainland experts said she was the only survivor of the 1937 atrocities to receive compensation from Japan during her lifetime.

'I feel greatly relieved,' said Ms Xia, a vocal advocate for survivors of the massacre, in which about 300,000 Chinese people were estimated to have been killed. 'The compensation is a comfort to all those who suffered in the massacre.'

The three-year lawsuit ended in February when the Japanese Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Shudo Higashinakano, the right-wing author of Nanjing Massacre: A Thorough Investigation, and Tendensha, a publishing house. The book denied the extent of the brutality and claimed she and other survivors fabricated their accounts.

Ms Xia maintained that Japanese soldiers killed seven out of nine members of her immediate family on December 12, 1937, when she was eight, and that she and her four-year-old sister were seriously wounded.

Courts in China have ruled that Professor Higashinakano libelled survivors of the massacre, including Ms Xia, in the 1998 book, which was translated into English and Chinese and had sold thousands of copies.